Notes from the undergrowth: New edition of Thoreau's journals

Monday

Oct 29, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2007 at 4:25 AM

You probably had to read "Walden" in high school, but if you really want to know the moody, fiercely individualistic, profound author, Jeffrey S. Cramer hopes you look through the journals where he recorded his private thoughts with subtle yet raw honesty.

Chris Bergeron

You probably had to read "Walden" in high school and years later had your picture taken by Henry David Thoreau's rebuilt cabin before crossing Rte. 126 to poke around the pond.

But if you really want to know the moody, fiercely individualistic, profound man who changed how Americans regard the natural world, Jeffrey S. Cramer hopes you look through the journals where he recorded his private thoughts with subtle yet raw honesty.

Rather than ask you to pore through 2 million words in 14 volumes, Cramer has edited and annotated 25 years of Thoreau's solitary musings into a gem of a book that offers new revelations about its multifaceted author on every page.

Four years before he published "Walden," Thoreau wrote: "What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the woods, their solitude and darkness? What salvation is there for him? God is silent and mysterious."

"Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines inwardly," he wrote on Nov. 20, 1850.

Cramer has edited the just-published "I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau."

"I wanted to portray Thoreau as a human. Thoreau is asking questions how he should live his life," he said. "We all ask ourselves the same questions. When we read these journal entries we realize he is just like you and me."

Simply put, Cramer's book provides an invaluable look into the complex heart of a New England native son who remains a giant of American literature.

The book's title comes from an entry Thoreau made in 1851: "'Says I to myself' should be the motto of my journal."

Starting out about three years ago, Cramer aimed to present a side of Thoreau that sometimes gets lost in his masterpieces where's he most serious.

"In condensing 14 volumes into one, I didn't want to put in things you'd find in 'Walden' or 'Civil Disobedience.' Most people who read those miss his sense of humor. He was a great punster. He wasn't always on the best of terms with Ralph Waldo Emerson," he said.

While he serves as curator of collections of The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, Cramer edited the journals on his own time and not as part of his official duties.

The institute is owned and managed by the Walden Woods Project which was founded by musician Don Henley in 1990. The Thoreau Institute opened in 1998.

Located at 44 Baker Farm Road in Lincoln, the institute holds an estimated "95 percent of everything published on Thoreau," said Cramer.

Throughout 528 pages, Cramer has gathered a variegated selection of entries that reveal the full spectrum of Thoreau's passions as a writer, philosopher, naturalist, social reformer, neighbor and friend.

"So many people look at Thoreau as a icon. Some call him the first environmentalist. Some see him as an antisocial hermit. But he was a real person," he said. "He walked around Concord and visited his family and friends. He helped escaped slaves. He fell in love and out of love. I wanted to make him real."

Published by the Yale University Press, "I to Myself" presents Thoreau's journal entries in a vertical box set in the center of facing pages. Cramer's informative emendations and commentaries are printed in marginal columns on the outside of the original text in columns along the outer edges of each page.

Sometimes he explains unusual words or phrases whose meaning has changed over the years. One annotated entry gives a brief recipe for "fried hasty pudding." Another from June 1857 explains that fishermen often used the legs of meadow frogs as bait to catch pickerel.

On Oct. 16, 1856 Thoreau sketched a fungus he found that looked remarkably like a penis. And Cramer notes Emerson wrote in his journal he'd found a similar "very undesirable neighbor" growing beneath his study window.

Cramer said, "I annotated whatever I thought needed explanation but only used references that would have been available to Thoreau. I really wanted readers to be able to put themselves in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s."

For the 150th anniversary of the publication of Thoreau's masterpiece in 2004 Cramer served as editor for "Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition, by Henry David Thoreau" also published by Yale University Press.

Cramer said Thoreau began keeping a journal in 1837 at Emerson's suggestion and continued making entries through 1861, a year before his death at 44. But the bulk of his entries were made in the decade between 1851 and 1861, he added.

Typically Thoreau jotted random thoughts and observations in a small "field notebook" or even on scraps of paper. He later expanded them in a series of bound journals he stored in a pine box shaped like a coffin.

Cramer said readers should realize that keeping a journal to share with friends was a far more common activity for people of all educational levels in Thoreau's era than today. "Back then almost everyone kept a journal, even farmers and definitely educated people. People shared their journals. When Thoreau writes in his journal, you feel like he's talking to you. In his journals he's definitely writing to a reader," he said.

Cramer followed a circuitous route to Thoreau and the Thoreau Institute.

An English major at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he immersed himself in the writings of English author Thomas Hardy. He later studied library science and worked at the Boston Public Library before coming to the Institute in 2000. A Maynard resident, he is married to Julia Berkley, a fabric artist. They have two teenage children.

For the future, Cramer is editing and annotating Thoreau's "The Maine Woods" with an expected publication date in 2009.

Cramer acknowledged even by mid-19th century standards Thoreau stood out as a man who "heard a different drummer."

"An attitude? It might have seemed that way. When I read the journals I found a man very passionate about life and how he wanted to to live it," he said. "He had a unique disposition and genius which I think has a lot to teach us."

To learn more about author Jeffrey S. Cramer, visit www.jeffreyscramer.com.